


Doors

by peoriapeoria



Category: Wilby Wonderful (2004)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-02
Updated: 2011-07-02
Packaged: 2017-10-20 22:43:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peoriapeoria/pseuds/peoriapeoria





	Doors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exbex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exbex/gifts).



He was a very fortunate man. Carol slept sprawled across his chest. He'd missed this, missed his wife. He still didn't know how he'd gotten so lost, he was just grateful...

They had moved back into his childhood home. Not right away, it was a crime scene for awhile until everything was dotted and crossed. That had been difficult all around, what with trespass, and false imprisonment, so many things.

That damn chair. When he was clear to take down the tape, after he'd heard and read, when he saw that chair he knew his misplaced nostalgia had almost killed a man.

Dan lived. He and Sandra had both stopped themselves. He'd listened to Mackenzie, found Stan planting evidence and wrighted a watertight case against the golf development. He'd been surprised to find Brent at the station. It made it so much easier, to hold him long enough to allow Brent's guilty conscience do most of the work.

The house wouldn't sell. At first, Carol pretended it wasn't listed. That lasted well past Buddy taking down the severed rope still tied around the beam, and burning the broken chair down on the beach. He'd known it was a problem--it was an Islander home, just across from Carol's office. Mainlanders wouldn't want it, and the Fishers had been one of few nibbles.

Carol surprised him, when she asked if he liked their home. Surprised. Nearly gave him a heart attack. He'd thought she'd found out and this was her opening for divorce. Fortunately she'd breezed on and explained that their house would sell well, and they could move closer into town, that there 'happened' to be a house available.

He'd teased her a little, played out her story a bit, then thanked her, and agreed that it was a good solution. In time they'd make enough memories here, that all the past lives, the almost endings, would become indistinct, like the ceiling above in the dark.

So many things could have gone differently, could have ended the possibility of this. He nuzzled Carol's hair and surrendered to sleep.

___

 

"Lucky" was not the first thing that came to mind when people thought of Walter McDonald, Duck knew. He looked at Dan, asleep beside him, and rapped the headboard gently. While everything didn't lead here, while this wasn't his reward for all the shit, he marveled anyway. Dan was still shy, which Duck liked, but he held his space better. Stood taller, greeted people by name. Now. At first, even after the bruising had mostly gone down, Dan was still raspy when he spoke.

The haircut had been first. It had been after Dan had come home from the hospital. They hadn't been sleeping together then, but the gossips thought otherwise, saying they believed their own mouths which should be a stretch.

"Haircut looks good." Duck stepped into the kitchen and crossed to the sink. It was still a little long, which looked good, modern or maybe old-fashioned. Duck didn't really know. Dan had chose it, would have had to explain it to the barber. Not a default, indecision.

Dan turned, smiled shyly, then looked back to the stove.

"Thanks for cooking."

Dan had taken that over as soon as Duck wasn't actively stopping him from lifting a finger. He was good at it, much better than himself. They didn't talk a lot, not just because of medical advice; it was a comfortable silence, not a portent of a storm, like too many silences this house had known.

Then it was new clothes. They fit better, allowing for Dan's build and stingy sleeves that weren't quite long enough. Dan tended to roll the cuffs up, at ease in these work shirts and unbroken jeans. Those jeans. They still weren't sleeping together, but they did kiss from time to time. Duck had resisted reeling Dan in by his belt loops, but not beating off to thoughts of that and more.

At that point Dan was sleeping in Duck's bed and Duck in this one. He'd passed it off as a guest room, his room. In a way it was the truth. He'd shared that room often as a boy, before the cousins and far flung friends stopped visiting. The mattress was new, since his mom died.

Dan reopened the video store. He changed the hours. Morning hours, afternoon and evening. There had never been much business during the heart of the day. Sometimes Dan helped out Duck with the odd two-man job. There weren't many of those, and most Duck could have done by himself if he'd needed to.

It was nearly fall when Carol decided that the French house wouldn't sell, before she asked about what it would take, time and bid, to ready the house for her and Buddy. The good thing was that it was an empty house, so he could get there early and work, break for small projects around town and work late if he needed. Winter on Wilby could be a bit lean, so it was good not to turn away anything, this year perhaps more than ever.

And, even if that hadn't been an issue, he still would have been prepared to work long hours to pull the project's duration down. Carol and Buddy were still shaky, Duck could tell. Not because they lacked the desire to stay together, that they didn't love each other enough; there just were things still pulling at them at all the wrong joins.

Duck smiled. Funny how things sometimes work out. That was what luck was about, when things went right when they so easily could have done otherwise. Dan could have taken those rumors badly, could have left for the Mainland. Duck could be sleeping in his old bed, instead of here with Dan. That he was here, that Dan was here with him was thanks to the French house.

 

"Duck?" Dan stepped inside. He was careful not to walk too close to the walls, some of which were still curing, the paint dry on the surface but not as it eventually would be. The house smelled of new paint. Change and hope. He hadn't really looked at the house when he'd come over to sign the papers about his own, other than spotting the beam in the parlor. Like Val's house it was empty, and that emptiness was yawing.

"Hey, Dan. What's--"

"I brought lunch."

"I just finished a room, let me get the brushes washed. Backyard is good." Duck headed off again further into the house.

"Okay." Dan didn't step back out. He'd decided to live, here in this house right before he almost died. He didn't blame Carol--she'd got him down, and by stuffing him in the closet had at once made it impossible to hide and made the story not just his. Mackenzie opened the door of his closet tomb, but it was Carol that buried his old life. He'd been loopy as the EMTs fastened the neck brace and wheeled him out to the ambulance. There really should be a third 'Mary'.

"Dan?"

Dan wondered if Duck had gotten concerned not seeing him in the backyard. "Wash up. I, I just want to take a look. You know."

Duck knew. He'd touched the rope fibers on the beam, the wood too old to take much impression of the rope strained by Dan swinging. There was a reason he'd not painted in here yet. "Okay. I'll meet you outside." Duck went back to scrub his arms and check the brushes.

They'd had a good lunch, cold fried chicken, potato salad and apple crumble. Duck felt the neighbors' eyes on him, watching them, judging. Dan wasn't unsettled so he wasn't going to rock the boat.

"I better start on the next room's prep work."

"Anything I can help with?"

Duck wished he was witty. There were things he wanted to say that had nothing to do with painters' tape or drop cloths. "Yeah, you can help."

In the end Dan didn't open the shop precisely on time. Duck got to know the space under the stairs very well, since there weren't any curtains in the house.

"Good thoughts?" Dan palmed Duck's erection sleepily.

"Great thoughts." Maybe it was how everyone thought they were doing everything everywhere. Maybe it was because Dan asked. It was just possible it was because it was wrong on so many levels, and yet better, so much better than if Dan hadn't been cut down.  
It should have been a wretched mess, making out for the first time, making love in that tiny space, the door cracked for light and the house wide open for airing.

Going back to his place would have been the reasonable thing to do. Dan asked. Told him, really. He'd wanted Dan to ask, this was even hotter. Stepping outside would have been a problem, despite coveralls. Duck left the door ajar, so he could see Dan. There'd been too much dark for both of them; he hadn't meant for it to go so far. Duck had, he told himself he had, only meant to put a couple good memories in for them, a little kissing and groping.

Yeah. Roads and intentions. It was bigger than the cab of his truck. Clean. Afterwards Duck had helped Dan wash up pouring water over him in the claw foot tub. That closet was the last part of the house he'd painted, in a fancy faux finish that he hoped no one wanted in more than a powder room.

__________

Buddy liked the way the light and the curtains cast patterns around the room. Their room. It was too bad they both needed to go to work. "Carol." She wasn't naturally a morning person. "Carol?"

"I know. Just." She kissed him where chest turned to shoulder and pushed herself up and swung out of bed. He watched her head for the first shower. He got up, pulled on a robe and headed for the kitchen, using the downstairs bathroom on the way. They'd agreed that stopping smoking and giving up coffee both was more than they could take. Cigarettes first.

He'd see her for lunch. Take it to her and close her office door. Egg salad was never so salacious.

"Pancakes! You'll make me fat, Buddy." Carol grabbed a piece of bacon.

"I promise to make sure you get plenty of exercise."

Carol smiled as she sat down.


End file.
